Glossary: R

rabb

() Al-Rabb is the Master who manages the affairs of His servant; the word connotes ownership, and God's ownership is the real one, which cannot be disjoined from managing the affairs of the owned thing. → Read
() The lexical meaning of rabb (lord) is more specific than that of mālik (owner): it means an owner who exercises control and authority over its possession and directs its affairs. → Read
() The lord (rabb) is one who is in charge of a person’s affairs, manages and nurtures them, and to whom they resort for all their needs, a sufficient cause who can protect them independently. → Read

rabbānī

Derived from al-Rabb (the Lord), with 'a' and 'n' added to augment the meaning; it means one who has a special relationship with the Lord and spends his life in His servitude and worship. → Read at 3:79

rabṭ ʿalā l-qulūb

Rabṭ means tying, and "binding upon the hearts" is an allusion to removing worry and anxiety from them. → Read at 18:14

raḥīm

Al-Raḥīm (the Merciful) is on the paradigm of the perpetual adjective (al-ṣifah al-mushabbahah), and is more appropriate for the perpetual, inexhaustible mercy that will be bestowed on the believers in the hereafter. → Read at 1:1

rahīn

From rahn, which al-Rāghib says is collateral given for a loan, and came to denote anything kept as a security or guarantee. → Read at 52:21

rahīnah

Rahīnah is synonymous with rahn (hostage, pledge); every soul is pledged and held with God until it pays His due through faith and righteous deeds, and is released if it does so, but remains confined forever if it dies in disbelief and sin. → Read at 74:38

raḥmah

() Mercy is the reaction one feels on seeing someone suffering from a deficiency he cannot remove, which moves one to supply what he needs; ultimately it means giving and bestowing to fulfill another's need, and it is in this latter sense that it is used for God. → Read
() A special effect on the heart, engendered by seeing another in need or suffering, that moves one to help. Attributed to God it signifies the outcome, not the feeling: His bestowal of gifts on mankind and of existence on all creation. → Read

raḥmān

() Al-Raḥmān (the Beneficent) is on a paradigm of magnification and exaggeration, and relates to the all-encompassing mercy bestowed on believers and unbelievers alike. → Read
() Al-Raḥmān is an exaggerated form derived from raḥmah, which means effusion through bringing into being and regulating; its sense of multiplicity makes it more compatible with istiwāʾ than other Names, which is why it is singled out here. → Read
() A hyperbolic form signifying an abundance of mercy through the generous giving of blessings, encompassing worldly blessings for believers and disbelievers alike and the believers' exclusive blessings in the Hereafter. → Read
() Al-Raḥmān is an intensified derivation from raḥmah, describing God’s Lordship as embracing everything with mercy, so nothing is left out of it unless it deprives itself through its own insufficiency and wrong choice. → Read

rahṭ

Al-Rāghib: rahṭ is a group of people fewer than ten, though it has also been defined as up to forty. → Read at 27:48

rajāʾ

Rajāʾ (hope) keeps its original meaning here, the opposite of fear, not "belief" or "fear" as some suggest; lack of hope describes a state of despair, of not anticipating any good. → Read at 71:13

rajīm

Rajm is driving away, commonly with stones and pebbles; laʿn (curse) is driving someone away from mercy. → Read at 15:34

rajs

Defilement; here, juxtaposed with faith, it denotes the opposite of faith: doubt (shakk) and suspicion (rayb). → Read at 10:100

rakn

Not merely to lean on something, but to lean on it because one has inclined towards it; hence it takes the preposition ilā rather than ʿalā. → Read at 11:113

raṣad

Rāṣid means “a guard or watch over something,” and raṣad is synonymous with it; the sentinels are guardian angels who protect revelation from any mix or alteration by the devils, between the messenger and the people and between the messenger and the Source of revelation. → Read at 72:27

ratq

Al-Rāghib: ratq means joining and cleaving together, whether by nature and creation or by fashioning; fatq, its opposite, means separating two things that are joined. → Read at 21:30

rawḥ

Breath, or a pleasant breath, used figuratively for relief and comfort as opposed to fatigue; rawḥ Allāh is relief after hardship by God's permission and will. → Read at 12:87

rayn

Al-Rāghib: rayn is the rust or stain that forms on the surface of a shiny object; sins rust the heart in the sense that they veil the soul, pure and polished in its pristine state, from perceiving the truth as it is. → Read at 83:14

razzāq

A noun of magnification: though God is the sole provider (rāziq), He is the All-provider because of the countless beings He provides for. → Read at 51:58

ribā

Ribā literally means for wealth to grow; God says li yarbū to show why it has been given this name. → Read at 30:39

riḍā

() Being pleased is a form the soul takes on when it meets something in harmony with it that it accepts without effort; ascribed to God it means rewarding with good recompense, an Attribute of Act, not of Essence. → Read
() Being pleased with God has two elements: being pleased with His creational decrees (takwīnī), so that nothing that occurs upsets one, and with His legislative decrees (tashrīʿī), so that one is not unsettled by the temptation to sin. → Read

riḥlah

Majmaʿ al-bayān: riḥlah is journeying on a rāḥilah, a strong camel; here it refers to the two annual trade journeys of the Quraysh, to Yemen in winter and to the Levant in summer. → Read at 106:2

rijs

() Al-Rāghib: a dirty thing; so al-rajāsah, like al-najāsah and al-qadhārah, is the quality that makes one keep away and refrain from a thing because one's nature finds it distasteful. → Read
() Rijs, from rajāsah, means filthiness or impurity: something one avoids, used physically or metaphorically; in this verse it is spiritual dirt such as shirk, kufr, or the aftereffects of vile deeds, which the human being perceives with the inner faculties. → Read

rizq

() Continuous sustenance; God's provision from the sky is rain, snow and the like, and from the earth the nurturing of plants and animals by which humans meet their needs. → Read
() Sustenance is what prolongs existence; it originates from the sky, with its sun rays and rainfall, and from the earth, with its greenery and animal life. → Read

rubūbiyyah

() God’s being the sole Lord of the entire universe (rubūbiyyah), meaning His sovereignty over all beings and His direction of all their affairs, justifies why He is the sole object of worship (ulūhiyyah), which is its corollary. → Read
() Monotheism with respect to lordship (rubūbiyyah) means that ruling over beings and directing their affairs belong to God alone, which requires that only He be worshiped; the verse refutes the polytheists who held that God only created. → Read

rūḥ

() The spirit is from the Command (); since Jesus was the creative word 'Be', which is a command, he was called 'the spirit'. → Read
() The spirit is the word of life which God speaks into things, bringing them to life by His will; it is an independent reality endowed with life, knowledge and power, of the Lord's command, and imparting it to a prophet's heart is revelation. → Read
() Rūḥ (soul, spirit) is lexically the source of life by which animals have sensation and voluntary movement, and is used metaphorically for things with good results such as knowledge; but in the Qur'an it does not always mean this, and apparently the spirit is of the type and nature of the divine command (amr). → Read
() The Spirit of His command here refers to prophethood: it is the same spirit mentioned in "The Spirit is of the command of my Lord" (), which accompanies the angels of revelation as they descend (). → Read
() Spirit, as its meaning comes to mind, is the origin of life from which power and consciousness exude; the believers are strengthened with a spirit in addition to the human spirit shared with disbelievers, giving them another life with new power and consciousness (; ). → Read
() The Spirit here is the being created through the divine command (); in other verses rūḥ is annexed or qualified when it refers to Gabriel, the human soul or the Qur’an, but here it is unqualified. → Read
() The apparent meaning of the Spirit is the reality related to the divine command (); idhn is granting permission, announcing that there is no obstacle to doing something. → Read

ruhbāniyyah

Monasticism derives from rahbah (fear), used for one who isolates himself from people to worship God out of fear of Him; ibtidāʿ is devising something without precedent. → Read at 57:27

rushd

() Al-rushd is to get at the reality of an affair, to reach the right path, and al-ghayy is its opposite; they are more general than al-hudā and al-ḍalāl; al-ḍalāl is deviating from the right path while remembering the goal, whereas al-ghayy is deviating without even knowing the goal. → Read
() Rashad or rushd means being guided to something which is sought. Al-Rāghib: rushd (rectitude) is the opposite of ghayy (misguidance) and is used in the same way as hidāya (guidance). → Read
() Rushd (growth, integrity, right course, rectitude) means “attaining the truth” and is the opposite of ghayy (error, straying); the Qur’an guides to it by preaching beliefs and actions that lead to true happiness. → Read

ruʾyah

There are two types of vision in the Qur'an: sensory sight by the eyes, and an inner consciousness without sensory or mental instruments; the latter, a special decisive knowledge of God, is what the Qur'an calls ruʾyah (seeing) and liqāʾ (meeting), and it will become complete for the righteous on the Day of Resurrection. → Read at 7:143

Glossary: R ​

Glossary: R